Regarding money-laundering, remember that the major banks and many of the fintech online banks are utterly paranoid about it. Getting an account for anything that isn't small and simple is very difficult. Despite this, there does appear to be large number of front businesses operating in plain sight with the tax authorities and police uninterested.
Question - is that because the UK has a long record making a lot of money as a tax haven? We take oceans of dodgy money from dodgy people - even letting some of them buy passports and dinner with the PM...
What I don't understand is if they are so obviously dodgy to us, why haven't they been investigated yet?
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
You seem to assume that Truss's measures will throw a spanner into the works of a thriving, healthy economy.
That is far, far from the case. The economy is in very bad trouble under policies you advocate and support. This is a basic demonstrable fact that all Sunak rampers ignore. They are backdating Truss's measures by 18 months.
I agree the economy is in trouble. That’s because the Conservative Party’s policies haven’t worked. I do not advocate or support the failed policies of the Conservative Governments we’ve had since 2015. It is, of course, Truss who advocated and supported all those policies.
Up until recently the government's policies have been more or less rubber stamped by labour. I don't hear too much grumbling about the highest taxes in 70 years from the opposition benches. What I hear is envy.
The FT is one of the central supporters of what is turning out to be a failed orthodoxy in economic policy. They cannot abide the fact Brownism is being summarily dumped as it reaches the bankruptcy it was always destined for.That is the agenda here.
What a peculiar post after the last 12 years of Conservative Governments and a mere 46 years out of the last seventy.
You make an undeniable point. The only thing I would say is that the conservatives were in coalition for five of those years, and obsessed with Brexit for another five.
But I concede, the tories have much to answer for. In many ways they have failed very badly.
[Translated] Former rector of the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI) Anatoly Gerashchenko died in an accident, reports The Moscow Post correspondent .
It is reported that the tragic accident occurred on the afternoon of Tuesday, September 21. Gerashchenko was at the Moscow Aviation Institute and descended the stairs. At one point, something went wrong, the scientist fell and flew several flights. He received injuries incompatible with life. Arriving ambulance officers ascertained the death of Gerashchenko.
It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Well, there were anti-semitic riots still in the 30's and 40's, so it's not entirely new. Compared to France I think we're doing well on this front, and unifying figures like Charles who are positive to the principle of people's experience of diverse religion, rather than leaving some people feeling generally negated by official secularism as in France, are an important part of that, I think.
At the same time, I've reflected that maybe he should not get involved for the moment. It would be a very risky first intervention in a situation where the violence hasn't become of the most serious or widespread nature. If it were to get worse following a statement from him, he could look either weak, or as if he's actually even made the situation worse, by emphasising it or drawing attention to it. Perhaps better to keep his own counsel for the time being.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
You seem to assume that Truss's measures will throw a spanner into the works of a thriving, healthy economy.
That is far, far from the case. The economy is in very bad trouble under policies you advocate and support. This is a basic demonstrable fact that all Sunak rampers ignore. They are backdating Truss's measures by 18 months.
I agree the economy is in trouble. That’s because the Conservative Party’s policies haven’t worked. I do not advocate or support the failed policies of the Conservative Governments we’ve had since 2015. It is, of course, Truss who advocated and supported all those policies.
Up until recently the government's policies have been more or less rubber stamped by labour. I don't hear too much grumbling about the highest taxes in 70 years from the opposition benches. What I hear is envy.
The FT is one of the central supporters of what is turning out to be a failed orthodoxy in economic policy. They cannot abide the fact Brownism is being summarily dumped as it reaches the bankruptcy it was always destined for.That is the agenda here.
What a peculiar post after the last 12 years of Conservative Governments and a mere 46 years out of the last seventy.
You make an undeniable point. The only thing I would say is that the conservatives were in coalition for five of those years, and obsessed with Brexit for another five.
But I concede, the tories have much to answer for. In many ways they have failed very badly.
They didn't obsess over Brexit on my account, so I'm not allowing you that one, even if I do Deputy Prime Minister Clegg. And I'm in two minds about that.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
If she didn't like it she could have resigned as a point of principle. The fact she didn't says a lot about her....
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
You mean Truss should follow Boris's scorched earth policy and remove another set of relatively sane Tory MPs until only the truest believers remain...
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
Going from large working majority for one side to any majority for other side in just 5 years is so rare!
As TSE would point out, post war at least, it's 1970 and only 1970. Heath turned a decent Labour majority (of nearly 100 it looks like) into a Conservative majority of 30.
But back in 1970, there were only two parties in the game. Now there really aren't.
Though in February 1974 Thorpe's Liberals got 19%, higher than the LDs are polling now and it was a hung parliament.
The problem for Labour stopping them getting a majority is still the SNP strength in Scotland not the LDs
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Being in the cabinet is a bit like a country being in the EU - you have no choice but to go along with everything, even if you’re outvoted. The only other option being to leave completely.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
You mean Truss should follow Boris's scorched earth policy and remove another set of relatively sane Tory MPs until only the truest believers remain...
Well, here’s an idea, what about not having Tory MPs in charge? I can think of somewhere over 200 MPs who we could have instead. Or let’s have a new election!
It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."
We need to shut down these second rate institutions and stop the mickey mouse degrees....
Just the mickey mouse degrees would do. Those of us who had labs at 9am always regarded them as such.
Yeah that will deter multi-million quid money laundering....
There's a bunch of them around Leicester Sq as well. I also saw one or two in Seville, it's not an entirely London thing
They are really odd. Garish and vulgar, and seldom full of customers
Speculation that they are money launderers?
Private Eye have been on this for 3+ years now. Everything about them is as bent as a nine bob note. Run by Afghani nationals, constantly dissolving companies and reforming. The suggestion is flushing dirty money from Afghanistan. Been at it for 15 years now, but with COVID etc, seen number of outlets skyrocket.
A perfectly maintained golf course with the greens cut daily. No golfers. At all.
There's something that smells very similar here in the Flatlands but on a smaller scale.
A golf course is actually quite a smart one. They can say that they’re selling ‘memberships’ to people mostly based overseas, and the lack of day-to-day business means they can sell an awful lot of them before the course gets so busy they complain they can’t book a tee time!
Needs a fair amount of money spent on it though, a full team of green keepers and their equipment doesn’t come cheap.
Surely you would start up a green keeping company that you contract to do the grounds maintenance at a strangely inflated price?
Similar to the development company that builds the 'luxury golf lodges' that are sold off plan but strangely never completed?
Theoretically, of course.
I think Taymouth has been sold several times since the Gaddafi accusations and is now owned by a large US business, but still hasn't opened. It may do eventually, you never know.
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Well, there were anti-semitic riots still in the 30's and 40's, so it's not entirely new. Compared to France I think we're doing well on this front, and unifying figures like Charles who are positive to the principle of people's experience of diverse religion, rather than leaving some people feeling generally negated by official secularism as in France, are an important part of that, I think.
At the same time, I've reflected that maybe he should not get involved for the moment. It would be a very risky first intervention in a situation where the violence hasn't become of the most serious or widespread nature. If it were to get worse following a statement from him, he could look either weak, or as if he's actually even made the situation worse, by emphasising it or drawing attention to it. Perhaps better to keep his own counsel for the time being.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."
We need to shut down these second rate institutions and stop the mickey mouse degrees....
Just the mickey mouse degrees would do. Those of us who had labs at 9am always regarded them as such.
Yeah that will deter multi-million quid money laundering....
There's a bunch of them around Leicester Sq as well. I also saw one or two in Seville, it's not an entirely London thing
They are really odd. Garish and vulgar, and seldom full of customers
Speculation that they are money launderers?
Private Eye have been on this for 3+ years now. Everything about them is as bent as a nine bob note. Run by Afghani nationals, constantly dissolving companies and reforming. The suggestion is flushing dirty money from Afghanistan. Been at it for 15 years now, but with COVID etc, seen number of outlets skyrocket.
A perfectly maintained golf course with the greens cut daily. No golfers. At all.
There's something that smells very similar here in the Flatlands but on a smaller scale.
A golf course is actually quite a smart one. They can say that they’re selling ‘memberships’ to people mostly based overseas, and the lack of day-to-day business means they can sell an awful lot of them before the course gets so busy they complain they can’t book a tee time!
Needs a fair amount of money spent on it though, a full team of green keepers and their equipment doesn’t come cheap.
Surely you would start up a green keeping company that you contract to do the grounds maintenance at a strangely inflated price?
Similar to the development company that builds the 'luxury golf lodges' that are sold off plan but strangely never completed?
Theoretically, of course.
I think Taymouth has been sold several times since the Gaddafi accusations and is now owned by a large US business, but still hasn't opened. It may do eventually, you never know.
It's been bought by an American family flush with cash from selling their Patron Tequila brand to Bacardi. They (should) actually invest and live part of the year in the area.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Well, there were anti-semitic riots still in the 30's and 40's, so it's not entirely new. Compared to France I think we're doing well on this front, and unifying figures like Charles who are positive to the principle of people's experience of diverse religion, rather than leaving some people feeling generally negated by official secularism as in France, are an important part of that, I think.
At the same time, I've reflected that maybe he should not get involved for the moment. It would be a very risky first intervention in a situation where the violence hasn't become of the most serious or widespread nature. If it were to get worse following a statement from him, he could look either weak, or as if he's actually even made the situation worse, by emphasising it or drawing attention to it. Perhaps better to keep his own counsel for the time being.
The 30s and 40s were almost a century ago.
Yes, but these events were from before the era of Commonwealth immigration - that's really the point I was making.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
I might do that, if I felt that the alternative wasn't a more aggressive version of the Sunakism of the past three years. I haven't seen much evidence that it wouldn't have been, but I remain to be convinced.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Being in the cabinet is a bit like a country being in the EU - you have no choice but to go along with everything, even if you’re outvoted. The only other option being to leave completely.
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
I've always pondered - how does our budget compare to say the USA, France, Germany, Japan. Do we spend more or less on schools, health, social care. Where do other nations save compared to us & vice versa ?
It's almost physically painful listening to JRM talking about the caps in terms of pounds per megawatt. There's a bit of me itching to yell, "It's a megawatt-hour, you humanities-educated fool! What do you think the h stands for in MWh? Don't you understand the difference between energy and power? No, of course you don't, yet here you are making critical decisions about issues that you barely comprehend."
We need to shut down these second rate institutions and stop the mickey mouse degrees....
Just the mickey mouse degrees would do. Those of us who had labs at 9am always regarded them as such.
Yeah that will deter multi-million quid money laundering....
There's a bunch of them around Leicester Sq as well. I also saw one or two in Seville, it's not an entirely London thing
They are really odd. Garish and vulgar, and seldom full of customers
Speculation that they are money launderers?
Private Eye have been on this for 3+ years now. Everything about them is as bent as a nine bob note. Run by Afghani nationals, constantly dissolving companies and reforming. The suggestion is flushing dirty money from Afghanistan. Been at it for 15 years now, but with COVID etc, seen number of outlets skyrocket.
A perfectly maintained golf course with the greens cut daily. No golfers. At all.
There's something that smells very similar here in the Flatlands but on a smaller scale.
A golf course is actually quite a smart one. They can say that they’re selling ‘memberships’ to people mostly based overseas, and the lack of day-to-day business means they can sell an awful lot of them before the course gets so busy they complain they can’t book a tee time!
Needs a fair amount of money spent on it though, a full team of green keepers and their equipment doesn’t come cheap.
Surely you would start up a green keeping company that you contract to do the grounds maintenance at a strangely inflated price?
Similar to the development company that builds the 'luxury golf lodges' that are sold off plan but strangely never completed?
Theoretically, of course.
I think Taymouth has been sold several times since the Gaddafi accusations and is now owned by a large US business, but still hasn't opened. It may do eventually, you never know.
It's been bought by an American family flush with cash from selling their Patron Tequila brand to Bacardi. They (should) actually invest and live part of the year in the area.
Sounds hopeful. If I lived in Kenmore I'd be pretty fed up with the whole affair!
It is a spectacular building and location, although you have to suspect maintaining a building of that age and design will be quite expensive.
The golf course is pretty decent too - a James Braid original. Not a championship layout these days but a good course in the classic style.
There's certainly a business there, although perhaps not one I'll be affording.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
There need to be a zero-based spending review, it’s long overdue.
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
Off the top of my head:
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
According to these articles, sectarianism in Scotland is tiny and largely myth.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
I've been a big critic of Sunak's paint-by-numbers approach to bring Chancellor. They doesn't mean that Truss and Kwarteng get a free pass on the basis of doing something, anything, different. Both can be wrong.
I've also criticised Labour for not doing much in the way of original thinking to pull us out of this morass.
"Soaring inflation led interest costs on UK government debt to hit a new record for August.
Interest due reached £8.2bn during the month, £1.5bn more than last year and the highest August figure since records began"
Yes it is the perfect time. Tax rises in April didn't stop the UK from borrowing, did they?
What an illiterate comment.
An extra £150bn in borrowing (to fund your pint of milk a week)
Capitalism rules OK
£150bn in borrowing is the extreme estimates to avoid over £5000 per annum energy bills for households plus commensurate savings for businesses too, to prevent businesses going bust.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
Off the top of my head:
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
So, your plan for reducing Government spending is cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people...?
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
According to these articles, sectarianism in Scotland is tiny and largely myth.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
Off the top of my head:
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
So, your plan for reducing Government spending is cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people...?
What's yours?
I'm not advocating we deliberately kill anyone who doesn't want to be killed, and even then not suggesting that for fiscal reasons but it is a nice bonus. But not bankrupting the country to keep the terminally ill alive for another year or two of suffering as we did during Covid absolutely is the right thing to do. We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
Off the top of my head:
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
So, your plan for reducing Government spending is cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people...?
What's yours?
I'm not advocating we deliberately kill anyone who doesn't want to be killed, and even then not suggesting that for fiscal reasons but it is a nice bonus. But not bankrupting the country to keep the terminally ill alive for another year or two of suffering as we did during Covid absolutely is the right thing to do. We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
Sounds liked you are volunteering yourself and your loved ones to opt out of treatment.
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
According to these articles, sectarianism in Scotland is tiny and largely myth.
Whatever you think of the Royal family, you have to applaud the wit of the Celtic fans there. It is a genuine LOL even if it shouldn't be. Scottish sectarianism is mostly football related but does have some independent life still and is most definitely still a thing, although much diminished thankfully. More of a west coast thing too, wasn't much of a thing growing up in Fife in the 1980s/90s but not entirely absent either.
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
Those who don't know how to read will say that reading it was a waste of time and that all it does is show that everything they believed beforehand was so true. (That's how an idiot's mind works.) Perhaps they might then make a 1970s comedy reference.
I would have posted the whole thing but it's too long. Here are some extracts. I've put some bits in bold.
"Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. (...) But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.
More weapons were pumped into Ukraine. The Kiev regime brought into play new groups of foreign mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained according to NATO standards and receiving orders from Western advisers.
At the same time, the regime of reprisals throughout Ukraine against their own citizens, established immediately after the armed coup in 2014, was harshly intensified (...)"
"The West has gone too far in its aggressive anti-Russia policy, making endless threats to our country and people. Some irresponsible Western politicians are doing more than just speak about their plans to organise the delivery of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, which could be used to deliver strikes at Crimea and other Russian regions.
Such terrorist attacks, including with the use of Western weapons, are being delivered at border areas in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. NATO is conducting reconnaissance through Russia’s southern regions in real time and with the use of modern systems, aircraft, vessels, satellites and strategic drones.
Washington, London and Brussels are openly encouraging Kiev to move the hostilities to our territory. They openly say that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently deprived of political, economic, cultural and any other sovereignty and ransacked.
They have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.
I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.
The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us."
Oh do fuck off you pathetic little man. Do you believe anything that you have posted here?
Who is more pathetic, an internet 'tard with a small vocabulary who posts a one-liner insult more suitable for a toilet wall like Twitter and who thinks that posting what Putin said (rather than mentioning Frank Muir after noticing the word "bluff" in a newspaper headline) means a person must necessarily adore Putin, or a cretin who hits a "Like" button?
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
Well it's definitely at war for the indefinite future, particularly if you're including Crimea in the aims (Which you do if I'm not mistaken). So it's somewhere you're not going to find a saving any time soon.
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
Well it's definitely at war for the indefinite future, particularly if you're including Crimea in the aims (Which you do if I'm not mistaken). So it's somewhere you're not going to find a saving any time soon.
In the short term there won't be any savings, no, but I'm talking about principles in general over the long term.
My suggestion of abolishing the triple lock would dwarf all other proposed spending changes anyway. But at least I'm proposing ideas, I don't see many others doing so.
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
Whoever is responsible I hope they are scrutinising this very closely:
The Standards of Care are not official standards, but are influential around the world. WPATH calls them “internationally accepted guidelines”. The NHS refers to the WPATH Standards of Care in a variety of medical documents (including the previous service specification for the Tavistock Gender and Identity Development Service clinic). The Scottish government also relies on them in its decision-making. The Standards of Care featured heavily in the significant case of Bell v Tavistock. These guidelines have been used by numerous private health clinics throughout the UK, to justify irreversible treatment on children and young people…..
…..The guidelines have removed any minimum age limit for a child to be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or sex-reassignment surgery (so long as that child has reached ‘Tanner Stage 2’ of puberty, which can be as young as nine years old)….
…Abandonment of mental-health safeguarding – The guidelines explicitly state that therapy or counselling should “never be mandatory” before prescribing irreversible medication or surgery, including for children. Therapeutic professionals are told that they must not impose their own narratives or preconceptions, yet are also told that they must be “gender affirming”. These principles are fundamentally incompatible.
But the Conservatives are facing numerous significant problems. 1) They've been in for a long time, so time for a change becomes a powerful mantra. 2) Cost of living is a problem for many people. 3) The former clownish PM's antics lost the party a lot of support which has not returned.
Against that, they do have incumbency and the boundary changes should help, but I'd not be surprised if we see a lot of changes next time.
This is about where I am. Labour winning outright from so far back should be very hard, but 2019 was unusual and there are a lot of time and stored up problems for the Tories. I think itll be close - if the Truss gambles pay off its a 1992 result.
Most likely the result will be 2010 in reverse, a hung parliament but Starmer like Cameron wins most seats
Looking at the economic numbers, I have no idea why any tory still thinks Sunak would have been a better option than Truss, as you manifestly do.
With Truss we might get some growth with a ballooning deficit. With Sunak we would get a depression with a ballooning deficit, followed by huge public spending cuts or going to the IMF. As shown by recent borrowing numbers.
Well said, the idea you can tax your way to growth has never been true and never will be true. Brownism failed under Brown, and its failed under Sunak too.
The simple reality is that the Government taxes us every which way it can, so any money taken out of circulation due to higher taxes must immediately lower tax receipts in other taxes, because its no longer being spent and taxed in other ways.
But those advocating tax rises never factor this in at all. Which is why tax rises never raise as much as their adherents expect, and why tax cuts don't cost as much as their critics claim either, as any extra money circulating in the economy due to tax cuts then gets itself taxed as it circulates minimising the cost of the tax cut.
I’m trying to work out some funny way to pun Truss and Kansas. Kantruss? Hmmm… not funny enough… The point being that this fantasy that you can cut taxes and everything will work out has been tried, and it doesn’t work. The classic, and very tragic, example of this is known as the Kansas Experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansas_experiment
The Kansas experiment was deeply, deeply flawed and not remotely comparable to the UK whatsoever. The UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago, from a record high base in the past 74 years.
As opposed to Kansas where tax loopholes were introduced allowed many people to cut their tax rate to literally zero. Zero percent tax rate is not something I'm advocating or anyone sane is. Oh and the Kansas bill also increased many other people's tax rates, it didn't reduce it, so increasing their tax rates would of course harm the economy while eliminating tax from others does nothing to raise revenues.
You say the UK is reversing tax rates back to what they were a few months ago. Are the stamp duty changes taking us back to where we were a few months ago? Indeed, I think there had already been 7 cuts in stamp duty since 2008.
The idea that the Kansas Experiment failed because it increased people’s taxes is a novel one.
Not that novel, its actually explicitly mentioned in your own link.
Direct benefits for the affluent The act received criticism for shifting the tax burden from wealthy Kansans to low- and moderate-income workers.[81][40]
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the bill cut the taxes of "the wealthiest 1% of Kansans by 2.2%," while it projected that the poorest 20% of Kansans would see "their taxes increase by 1.3%".[82]
Bryan Lowry of The Wichita Eagle estimated that almost 70% of Kansas lawmakers, as well as Governor Brownback and his wife, benefited personally from the tax cuts through business or property that they owned, which being non-wage income, was exempt from taxes under the 2012 law.[83]
I 100% wholeheartedly recognise that raising taxes on working income and eliminating taxes on non-earned incomes is a terrible, terrible idea. What tax is it in the UK that is most similar to the Kansas experiment, whereby those working see their taxes go up, while those not working see their taxes go down? Oh yes, its National Insurance, isn't it.
Sunak's plans of slashing Income Tax by 4p while raising National Insurance to pay for it is what was more like the Kansas Experiment, not Truss reversing tax rises on earnt incomes.
Sunak was seeking to balance the budget. Truss, like Kansas, is relying on future growth to pay for hers. That’s where the similarity is.
There are times when it’s appropriate to cut taxes, and times when it’s appropriate to borrow money. What’s particularly dangerous, however, is pretending that you can cut taxes because you’re sure future growth will be along any day now to fill the Treasury’s coffers.
Saying you're balancing the budget and actually doing so are two completely different things. How does cutting Income Tax by 4p while increasing National Insurance, thus completely distorting taxation away from unearned incomes and towards earned ones, do anything whatsoever to balance the budget.
Yes there are times when its appropriate to borrow money. During a supply shock recession is one of them, which is right now.
I agree that saying you’re balancing the budget and actually doing so are two different things. The Truss government isn’t even saying they’re balancing the budget!
Do you think it is sensible to rely on future growth projections?
Let's look at what we know, and what we know is that Sunakism is failing. That isn't conjecture any more, it is fact. Look at the PSBR numbers now, before higher interest rates and higher corporation taxes hit home. The UK under Sunak was manifestly heading for a depression. A depression that would have blown his 'balanced budget' fantasy even more off course than it is now.
Where would he have gone after the financial meltdown he was creating became undeniable? massive public spending cuts would have been his only option.
Then let’s get rid of every MP who supported Sunakism… or at least the Cabinet members who did.
That seems to have been done. 👍
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
Was Liz Truss not in the same Cabinet as Sunak? Was Jacob Rees-Mogg not? Suella Braverman? Ben Wallace? Alok Sharma?
Truss was reported at the time to have opposed the decision but had to follow collective responsibility.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
Had to follow collective responsibility? You mean chose to follow collective responsibility.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
Every member of a party, even backbenchers, have to vote to follow their own government's budget, that's not new.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
Again you confuse “has” with “chooses”.
Chooses to keep the whip? Yes, they could cross the floor if they wanted to vote against the budget, but that's a bit extreme. The leadership campaign gave people a chance to choose between those two visions.
It did… and Tory MPs made clear their preference when voting for… oh, well for Sunak’s vision actually.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
Tory MPs didn't vote for Sunak's vision, about a third did but they lost the election and aren't in the Cabinet. 👍
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
If you want lower taxes you should be cutting Government spending.
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
Off the top of my head:
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
So, your plan for reducing Government spending is cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people...?
What's yours?
I'm not advocating we deliberately kill anyone who doesn't want to be killed, and even then not suggesting that for fiscal reasons but it is a nice bonus. But not bankrupting the country to keep the terminally ill alive for another year or two of suffering as we did during Covid absolutely is the right thing to do. We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
I'm not running the country. (I don't think I should be running the country.) So, I don't have a plan for Government spending. I do have a plan to not vote Conservative at the next General Election, although I'm in a safe seat (Starmer's in fact), so my vote will have no impact.
(Electorally speaking, I think your plan (cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people) is unlikely to prosper at the ballot box.)
I think, as a country, we can afford to spend more on Government services, so I'm not looking to cut spending or lower taxes. I do believe in the state investing in its people and its infrastructure, and in encouraging companies to invest. That saves you money in the long-term.
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
But you were asking about where you would make savings. Ergo, you presumably support something that is, on average, below the current 2%?
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
But you were asking about where you would make savings. Ergo, you presumably support something that is, on average, below the current 2%?
Over the long-term, yes I am. Having a floor of 2% that is never dropped below, but then spending more when required, absolutely wastes money, yes I am saying that. Alternatively spending exactly 2% even when at war or not at war means you're not spending enough in the war times and spending too much at peace times. Either way its a bad target.
Spending for spending's sake to make the numbers add up, rather than because its required, is not a productive use of money.
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
What's right, what's wrong, and how some people's lives aren't worth any more than dogsh*t - I learn so much from your posts.
Errr do they know who introduced and voted for the Northern Ireland Protocol?
The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
The level of sneering stupidity is almost preposterous. They want Liz to "stand up" to Biden. In America. At their first meeting. On an issue where the US position is clear, rationale and long-established, and the UK position an utter joke?
We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
What's right, what's wrong, and how some people's lives aren't worth any more than dogsh*t - I learn so much from your posts.
I was only 11 when Rwanda happened so no I didn't say the same as I wasn't interested in politics or the news then.
Kosovo was the first conflict I was engaged for and I completely supported standing up to Serbia then.
I also thought and still think removing Saddam was the right thing to do. Even if that's not a popular opinion anymore.
@BartholomewRoberts On defense/foreign aid I thought you were in favour of supporting Ukraine ?
I absolutely am!
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do
Did you say the same about Rwanda when there was real genocide?
It is always easy to know when Russia is in a really bad place when the shills have to resort to whataboutism from something decades ago as their response. Why don't you tell the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by the criminal Russian regime to be raised as Russians that there's no real genocide going on?
Don't worry Russian conscripts the Russian Federation will be providing you with these top-of-the-range T-62 tanks.
A new batch of cold-war era T62-M tanks (MY1983) for newly mobilized Russian soldiers is on its way to Ukraine. Photo taken on Sep. 11 in Millerovo, Rostov region (source archive.ph/DFQ7c). https://twitter.com/kromark/status/1572547554675687428
The West is sending Ukraine T-55s!
And Ukraine will still win, which is one demonstration of the importance of tanks on the modern battlefield I guess.
They are actually very souped up - unlike the T62s that the Russians are pulling out of storage.
The L7 gun (UK Royal Ordnance, take a bow) these conversions carry was devastating against the older generations of tanks.
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go.
Those who don't know how to read will say that reading it was a waste of time and that all it does is show that everything they believed beforehand was so true. (That's how an idiot's mind works.) Perhaps they might then make a 1970s comedy reference.
I would have posted the whole thing but it's too long. Here are some extracts. I've put some bits in bold.
"Kiev representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. (...) But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kiev was actually ordered to wreck all these agreements.
More weapons were pumped into Ukraine. The Kiev regime brought into play new groups of foreign mercenaries and nationalists, military units trained according to NATO standards and receiving orders from Western advisers.
At the same time, the regime of reprisals throughout Ukraine against their own citizens, established immediately after the armed coup in 2014, was harshly intensified (...)"
"The West has gone too far in its aggressive anti-Russia policy, making endless threats to our country and people. Some irresponsible Western politicians are doing more than just speak about their plans to organise the delivery of long-range offensive weapons to Ukraine, which could be used to deliver strikes at Crimea and other Russian regions.
Such terrorist attacks, including with the use of Western weapons, are being delivered at border areas in the Belgorod and Kursk regions. NATO is conducting reconnaissance through Russia’s southern regions in real time and with the use of modern systems, aircraft, vessels, satellites and strategic drones.
Washington, London and Brussels are openly encouraging Kiev to move the hostilities to our territory. They openly say that Russia must be defeated on the battlefield by any means, and subsequently deprived of political, economic, cultural and any other sovereignty and ransacked.
They have even resorted to the nuclear blackmail. I am referring not only to the Western-encouraged shelling of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, which poses a threat of a nuclear disaster, but also to the statements made by some high-ranking representatives of the leading NATO countries on the possibility and admissibility of using weapons of mass destruction – nuclear weapons – against Russia.
I would like to remind those who make such statements regarding Russia that our country has different types of weapons as well, and some of them are more modern than the weapons NATO countries have. In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country and to defend Russia and our people, we will certainly make use of all weapon systems available to us. This is not a bluff.
The citizens of Russia can rest assured that the territorial integrity of our Motherland, our independence and freedom will be defended – I repeat – by all the systems available to us."
Oh do fuck off you pathetic little man. Do you believe anything that you have posted here?
Who is more pathetic, an internet 'tard with a small vocabulary who posts a one-liner insult more suitable for a toilet wall like Twitter and who thinks that posting what Putin said (rather than mentioning Frank Muir after noticing the word "bluff" in a newspaper headline) means a person must necessarily adore Putin, or a cretin who hits a "Like" button?
You.
Another candidate would be the senile Peter the Great wannabe who now doesn't have the power to broadcast a speech when he wants to, without sign off from his minders.
Errr do they know who introduced and voted for the Northern Ireland Protocol?
The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
As a previous PM put it, "no UK prime minister could ever agree" to a border in the Irish Sea, and, as another former PM said, ""no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement".
The first of those didn't agree to such a border, and for her troubles was ignominiously chucked out by the ERG. The second did, and was praised to the skies by the ERG.
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
NICE don't authorise drugs for use.
OK, it's a bit complicated! The MHRA authorises drugs. The MHRA has authorised puberty blockers... for certain uses. However, doctors can and routinely do use all sorts of drugs for purposes other than which they are licensed. (On the grounds that the drugs have been authorised for some use, ergo we know they're reasonably safe, and that their usage to date has also proven them safe.) The checks on whether doctors are making sensible prescribing/treatment decisions are either at the level of the individual practitioner or at the level of the service. The service is covered by the CQC. Individual practitioners are covered by licensing and, ultimately, the threat of being done for malpractice if they can't justify their decision(s), which would be judged against the Bolam standard.
NICE assesses cost effectiveness and recommends best treatments. NICE has a massive backlog and there are many aspects of medicine where there is no NICE guidance at present. NICE generally concentrates on the bigger stuff and the numbers here are pretty small. NICE could be asked to recommend best practice in this area. (Maybe they have been? I don't know.)
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
According to these articles, sectarianism in Scotland is tiny and largely myth.
Whatever you think of the Royal family, you have to applaud the wit of the Celtic fans there. It is a genuine LOL even if it shouldn't be. Scottish sectarianism is mostly football related but does have some independent life still and is most definitely still a thing, although much diminished thankfully. More of a west coast thing too, wasn't much of a thing growing up in Fife in the 1980s/90s but not entirely absent either.
We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
What's right, what's wrong, and how some people's lives aren't worth any more than dogsh*t - I learn so much from your posts.
I was only 11 when Rwanda happened so no I didn't say the same as I wasn't interested in politics or the news then.
Kosovo was the first conflict I was engaged for and I completely supported standing up to Serbia then.
I also thought and still think removing Saddam was the right thing to do. Even if that's not a popular opinion anymore.
Standing up to Putin is unquestionably correct.
And you think we can stand up to Serbia, Saddam and Putin with <2% defence spending?
Errr do they know who introduced and voted for the Northern Ireland Protocol?
The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
As a previous PM put it, "no UK prime minister could ever agree" to a border in the Irish Sea, and, as another former PM said, ""no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement".
The first of those didn't agree to such a border, and for her troubles was ignominiously chucked out by the ERG. The second did, and was praised to the skies by the ERG.
Because contrary to your belief the agreement doesn't put a border there, it explicitly states that NI is a sovereign part of the United Kingdom.
Which is precisely why Truss's NI Protocol Bill is viable. Because its domestic law for domestic territory, perfectly legitimate and legal. If territorial integrity had been sacrificed then Parliament couldn't pass Truss's NI Protocol Bill and if it did, it could be struck down by a higher court.
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
It's interesting to look at perceptions between say the late 1950s and the mid 1980s of what a nuclear war between major powers would look like, and then compare them with perceptions now. One thing that has gone for a complete burton is the idea of nuclear winter. Nowadays if it's mentioned at all it can even be dismissed as KGB propaganda. Which is ironic, given all the shouting about climate change supposedly caused by types of human action that aren't nuclear warfare.
"Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation."
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
I'm not sure what you are saying about the Cass Report is quite accurate. The report seemed to cover both the treatments themselves and the whole approach by the Tavistock. Puberty blockers are, AIUI, drugs developed for other purposes being used for this. The evidence for their medical efficacy vs the side effects for children has not really been established or tested. One of the worrying things which has come out is the lack of records and follow up for patients put on such treatments. I thought NICE was meant authorise drugs for use. If it didn't how was such use authorised? The issue of informed consent is also an interesting one.
They’re exactly the same drugs as those used to treat precocious puberty. (In adults they’re used to treat endometriosis & a bunch of other things.) These are fairly well characterised drugs, as healthcare treatments go
NICE:
This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
But at least we'd have Leon reassuring us that our thin soup was the equal of anything France or Italy could produce.
We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
What's right, what's wrong, and how some people's lives aren't worth any more than dogsh*t - I learn so much from your posts.
I was only 11 when Rwanda happened so no I didn't say the same as I wasn't interested in politics or the news then.
Kosovo was the first conflict I was engaged for and I completely supported standing up to Serbia then.
I also thought and still think removing Saddam was the right thing to do. Even if that's not a popular opinion anymore.
Standing up to Putin is unquestionably correct.
And you think we can stand up to Serbia, Saddam and Putin with less than 2% defence spending?
In years of peace, yes I think spending 1.9% or 1.8% in some years of peace absolutely could be sufficient.
The problem with spending for spending's sake is it is inefficient and encourages wasteful spending on a "use it or lose it" basis. If you want to give 2% per annum then far better would be giving the MoD 2% per annum but letting them save eg 0.25% of GDP in peaceful years so that they have a war chest to access when they need it, rather than having to go begging for more money when they need it.
#Breaking: just in - The traffic jam at the border with #Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after #Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to #Ukraine. https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1572568782748680194/video/1
It strikes me that the riots in Birmingham and Leicester are an above-politics situation where the new king could immediately get involved to plead for unity and calm, and also set the tone of his reign. Inter-faith understanding has been one of his main obsessions and passions for forty or maybe fifty years.
There would have to be some sort of statement or governmental stance by Truss and/or one of her ministers first, obviously and clearly.
A bigger question is why we have sectarian hostility and violence in mainland Britain in 2022. This is the sort of thing you expect from the nutters in Northern Ireland. We had long moved past this sort of thing but our immigration policy has brought it back. Of course there will be a conspiracy of silence about the origins of this among the media and there will be accountability.
Point of order: plenty of sectarianism on the mainland, though declining over the long term; in that case Royal intervention would be tricky (one side being very much affiliated to the RF, the other the opposite).
I may have underestimated how backwards Western Scotland is on this issue. But again, mainly an imported thing from Ireland, isn't it?
Can we call it that? It's been there since the late C19, so 'imported' is perhaps pushing it. And a lot of it stemmed from nativist hostility, which is by defintion not imported. Though there remain cultural and organizational links with NI.
According to these articles, sectarianism in Scotland is tiny and largely myth.
Whatever you think of the Royal family, you have to applaud the wit of the Celtic fans there. It is a genuine LOL even if it shouldn't be. Scottish sectarianism is mostly football related but does have some independent life still and is most definitely still a thing, although much diminished thankfully. More of a west coast thing too, wasn't much of a thing growing up in Fife in the 1980s/90s but not entirely absent either.
Rangers sectarianism....Ugly nasty intimidation
Celtic sectarianism.....witty harmless bants.
I'm not sure about that but I would certainly put the cited example in the latter category!
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
But at least we'd have Leon reassuring us that our thin soup was the equal of anything France or Italy could produce.
Leons tour of subsistence feeding centres! A must read for all irradiated PBers
Regarding money-laundering, remember that the major banks and many of the fintech online banks are utterly paranoid about it. Getting an account for anything that isn't small and simple is very difficult. Despite this, there does appear to be large number of front businesses operating in plain sight with the tax authorities and police uninterested.
Question - is that because the UK has a long record making a lot of money as a tax haven? We take oceans of dodgy money from dodgy people - even letting some of them buy passports and dinner with the PM...
What I don't understand is if they are so obviously dodgy to us, why haven't they been investigated yet?
Well, quite. What HMRC doing?
A relative runs a building company.
Under New Labour, he suggested to a number of people in government that correlating planning permission, active building sites (domestic) and large personal cash withdrawals would be a good idea.
The reaction was interesting - someone at HMRC told him to stop causing trouble.
For a period, there were areas of London where it was impossible to do a legitimate, taxed job. The pirates would undercut you massively.
They killed several people, in site accidents, as a by-the-by.
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
But at least we'd have Leon reassuring us that our thin soup was the equal of anything France or Italy could produce.
Leons tour of subsistence feeding centres! A must read for all irradiated PBers
Leon lives in inner London so like me he would be one of the lucky millions to die immediately. And I mean lucky.
Errr do they know who introduced and voted for the Northern Ireland Protocol?
The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
As a previous PM put it, "no UK prime minister could ever agree" to a border in the Irish Sea, and, as another former PM said, ""no British Conservative government could or should sign up to any such arrangement".
The first of those didn't agree to such a border, and for her troubles was ignominiously chucked out by the ERG. The second did, and was praised to the skies by the ERG.
Yes she did. You don't understand Theresa May's deal if you think it didn't involve new Irish Sea border checks.
Due to security reasons, Latvia will not issue humanitarian or other types of visas to those Russian citizens who avoid mobilization, nor will it change the border crossing restrictions for Russian citizens with Schengen visas introduced since September 19th,
Because contrary to your belief the agreement doesn't put a border there, it explicitly states that NI is a sovereign part of the United Kingdom.
Great, well you'd better tell the ERG and put their minds at rest, then. They seem to be terribly worried about it.
There are issues, issues that can be resolved via domestic legislation like the NI Protocol Bill.
That is what sovereignty and taking back control is all about, evolving over time and Parliament doing its job.
Quite how you come to the conclusion that domestic legislation can unilaterally 'resolve' alleged issues with an international treaty is one of those mysteries to which I think we'll never find an answer. You do realise that there are two parties to the NIP, I take it?
This whole thread is desolating: when American capitalist medicine meets a crazy new ideology
American clinics are pushing radical trans surgery and puberty blockers on kids "because they make so much m money for us". Here they are ADMITTING it
"Vanderbilt opened its trans clinic in 2018. During a lecture the same year, Dr. Shayne Taylor explained how she convinced Nashville to get into the gender transition game. She emphasized that it's a "big money maker," especially because the surgeries require a lot of "follow ups""
"Just a few vaginoplasties can finance the whole clinic"
They had better have some bloody good insurance in place for the inevitable lawsuits, which have already started.
There’s an ambulance chasing law firm running around the UK trying to drum up business. Have they actually managed to find more than a single digit numbers of clients?
I was referring to law suits in the US.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Isn't it more a CQC matter than a NICE matter? NICE advise on specific treatments, generally new ones, with a focus on more common conditions. CQC oversees care more generally. The Cass Report suggests the problems at the Tavistock are more general rather than in terms of the efficacy of specific treatments. Also, CQC regulates while NICE advises.
Whoever is responsible I hope they are scrutinising this very closely:
The Standards of Care are not official standards, but are influential around the world. WPATH calls them “internationally accepted guidelines”. The NHS refers to the WPATH Standards of Care in a variety of medical documents (including the previous service specification for the Tavistock Gender and Identity Development Service clinic). The Scottish government also relies on them in its decision-making. The Standards of Care featured heavily in the significant case of Bell v Tavistock. These guidelines have been used by numerous private health clinics throughout the UK, to justify irreversible treatment on children and young people…..
…..The guidelines have removed any minimum age limit for a child to be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or sex-reassignment surgery (so long as that child has reached ‘Tanner Stage 2’ of puberty, which can be as young as nine years old)….
…Abandonment of mental-health safeguarding – The guidelines explicitly state that therapy or counselling should “never be mandatory” before prescribing irreversible medication or surgery, including for children. Therapeutic professionals are told that they must not impose their own narratives or preconceptions, yet are also told that they must be “gender affirming”. These principles are fundamentally incompatible.
The more important point to note is that many of the people behind W-PATH are not doctors at all and some of those who are have very clear conflicts of interest. More worryingly it has worked closely with some very odd individuals, who really should be nowhere near medical care of any kind - see for instance the person who was apparently involved in writing the chapter on eunuchs.
The wider point is perhaps this: even the medical establishment is not immune from fads or for allowing ideologies to influence treatment. See the sterilisation of "simple-minded" women during the 20th century or the treatment of homosexuality, considered a mental disorder at one time. So it really matters to get care which is based on sound and properly tested evidence not as a result of wish fulfilment or ideology of self-interest. The evidence in the Keira Bell case is really interesting on this aspect, as is the Court's reaction, even if the decision - on the issue of Gillick competence - was the right one.
#Breaking: just in - The traffic jam at the border with #Russia/#Finland has pilled up to 35KM and is rising by the hour, it is the only border who is still open for Russian civilians with shengen visas, after #Putin announced he will send 300.000 new troops to #Ukraine. https://twitter.com/sotiridi/status/1572568782748680194/video/1
Finland's going to close that shortly I'd imagine.
For anyone who likes to totally scare themselves to death over Nuclear War I recommend War Plan UK by Duncan Campbell, it details the UK and others preparedness (or not!) for nuclear exchange in the Cold War. Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in. 800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot. Grim grim grim
It's interesting to look at perceptions between say the late 1950s and the mid 1980s of what a nuclear war between major powers would look like, and then compare them with perceptions now. One thing that has gone for a complete burton is the idea of nuclear winter. Nowadays if it's mentioned at all it can even be dismissed as KGB propaganda. Which is ironic, given all the shouting about climate change supposedly caused by types of human action that aren't nuclear warfare.
"Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation."
Sounds like Covid marshal heaven!
Square Leg was heavily criticised for being too bleak and 'society ending' (very much as suggested by the end of Threads'), they wanted more of an idea on survival and reconstruction after a more limited exchange, such as today's even all out war would be. Nuclear winter was predicated on soot from urban infernos/firestorms. Modern building design lessens that risk considerably
Comments
The people in Number's 10 and 11 when Sunak started putting up the tax rises are now backbenchers and the Tories just had a bitter campaign fought on whether to continue with Sunakism or reverse his tax rises and go back to the rates before. As far as I can tell, practically everyone who endorsed Sunakism is now out of the Cabinet and quite right too.
Good riddance.
But I concede, the tories have much to answer for. In many ways they have failed very badly.
At the same time, I've reflected that maybe he should not get involved for the moment. It would be a very risky first intervention in a situation where the violence hasn't become of the most serious or widespread nature. If it were to get worse following a statement from him, he could look either weak, or as if he's actually even made the situation worse, by emphasising it or drawing attention to it. Perhaps better to keep his own counsel for the time being.
The leadership campaign gave the opportunity to choose between the two models, and Truss unabashedly stood for reversing those tax rises. Good for her, and good for everyone who endorsed her, and good riddance to everyone who endorsed Sunak instead.
I believe every member of the current Cabinet voted for Sunak’s last budget.
But the leadership campaign gave people a free and unwhipped choice and they made their choices then.
The problem for Labour stopping them getting a majority is still the SNP strength in Scotland not the LDs
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/18/dont-pass-catholic-churches-protests-as-glasgow-braces-for-orange-walks
Similar to the development company that builds the 'luxury golf lodges' that are sold off plan but strangely never completed?
Theoretically, of course.
I think Taymouth has been sold several times since the Gaddafi accusations and is now owned by a large US business, but still hasn't opened. It may do eventually, you never know.
Tory MPs keep getting things wrong. You and MISTY are saying they sometimes get things wrong; I’m saying they nearly always get it wrong. I don’t think we’re too far apart here! My solution is that, at the next available democratic opportunity, we get rid of them.
If alternative candidates come with a better, lower tax vision then I of course could be tempted to vote for them.
No chance i will vote for either Truss or SKS
Where would you like to begin cutting it - as the big items can't be touched.
As far as the U.K. is concerned, I don't know the answer to your question. The name of the law firm was unknown to me and is not one I've heard of in relation to medical negligence claims.
Rather than suing after the event (when damage, possibly or reversible damage, is done), it would be more sensible to get a properly evidenced basis for the right sort of treatment for those with properly diagnosed gender dysphoria, especially in the case of children. Hopefully, the final Cass Report will help with that and those with a financial or other interest in pushing drugs or surgery will not be involved in making recommendations. Medical treatment should only be given for sound medical reasons and only if it is in the best medical interests of the patient.
I am curious as to why NICE has not been involved in relation to the Tavistock issue. Perhaps it was.
Have Yougov polled it ?
An extra £150bn in borrowing (to fund your pint of milk a week)
Capitalism rules OK
It is a spectacular building and location, although you have to suspect maintaining a building of that age and design will be quite expensive.
The golf course is pretty decent too - a James Braid original. Not a championship layout these days but a good course in the classic style.
There's certainly a business there, although perhaps not one I'll be affording.
1: Abolish the planning consent and committees etc. Reduce spending and get more houses, win/win.
2: Increase pensions by no more than earnings rather than triple lock them.
3: Give the NHS a budget and stick to it. If people die because they can't be treated by the NHS, then they die, we can't save everyone.
4: No more lockdowns or similar civil liberty restrictions. Again, if people die, they die.
5: Defence, Foreign Aid etc should be based upon what we can afford and what is productive, not a percentage of GDP spending for spending's sake.
6: Not deliberately to cut spending but it will be a positive side effect, but people who wish to end their own lives should be allowed to do so legally. It is immoral to keep people who wish to die alive when we would be more humane to a pet, its also bloody expensive to do so, but the morality is a bigger issue here.
Since healthcare and pensions are the UK's two biggest burdens of expenditure, that's a significant difference in those alone.
https://web.archive.org/web/20070103044854/http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/comment.cfm?id=171622005
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/belief/2011/apr/24/scotland-sectarianism-research-data
I've also criticised Labour for not doing much in the way of original thinking to pull us out of this morass.
That's way more than a pint of milk a week.
https://twitter.com/darrengrimes_/status/1570171675810971648?s=20&t=yMjwqzjHs3V0AOCGgy0aTA
https://twitter.com/AndrewMaclean_/status/1571454071772438530?s=20&t=yMjwqzjHs3V0AOCGgy0aTA
I'm not advocating we deliberately kill anyone who doesn't want to be killed, and even then not suggesting that for fiscal reasons but it is a nice bonus. But not bankrupting the country to keep the terminally ill alive for another year or two of suffering as we did during Covid absolutely is the right thing to do. We need to be less squeamish about death, there's more to life than death and bankrupting the country to keep the old alive forever isn't possible, everyone dies in the end.
Scottish sectarianism is mostly football related but does have some independent life still and is most definitely still a thing, although much diminished thankfully. More of a west coast thing too, wasn't much of a thing growing up in Fife in the 1980s/90s but not entirely absent either.
We should support Ukraine because its the right thing to do, not because we're trying to inflate spending to artificially hit 2.0% instead of 1.9%
If supporting Ukraine during a war means we hit 3% or 4% this year because its necessary then so be it, if during many years of peace 1.7% is all we need to spend to remain ready for conflict if it arises then that should be the spending then.
Spending because its required is good. Spending for the sake of spending to hit a spending target is not, and is inefficient.
My suggestion of abolishing the triple lock would dwarf all other proposed spending changes anyway. But at least I'm proposing ideas, I don't see many others doing so.
https://sex-matters.org/posts/updates/wpath/
The Standards of Care are not official standards, but are influential around the world. WPATH calls them “internationally accepted guidelines”. The NHS refers to the WPATH Standards of Care in a variety of medical documents (including the previous service specification for the Tavistock Gender and Identity Development Service clinic). The Scottish government also relies on them in its decision-making. The Standards of Care featured heavily in the significant case of Bell v Tavistock. These guidelines have been used by numerous private health clinics throughout the UK, to justify irreversible treatment on children and young people…..
…..The guidelines have removed any minimum age limit for a child to be given puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones or sex-reassignment surgery (so long as that child has reached ‘Tanner Stage 2’ of puberty, which can be as young as nine years old)….
…Abandonment of mental-health safeguarding – The guidelines explicitly state that therapy or counselling should “never be mandatory” before prescribing irreversible medication or surgery, including for children. Therapeutic professionals are told that they must not impose their own narratives or preconceptions, yet are also told that they must be “gender affirming”. These principles are fundamentally incompatible.
(Electorally speaking, I think your plan (cutting defence spending, cutting foreign aid, and killing old people) is unlikely to prosper at the ballot box.)
I think, as a country, we can afford to spend more on Government services, so I'm not looking to cut spending or lower taxes. I do believe in the state investing in its people and its infrastructure, and in encouraging companies to invest. That saves you money in the long-term.
Liz Truss told by ERG MPs to "stand up for the territorial integrity of the UK" and that "sovereignty within the UK is non-negotiable" over the Northern Ireland Protocol when she meets US President Joe Biden at 6pm
http://telegraph.co.uk/politicsnewsletter https://twitter.com/christopherhope/status/1572585334927667200/photo/1
The territorial integrity left the building a while back.
Spending for spending's sake to make the numbers add up, rather than because its required, is not a productive use of money.
Operation Square Leg simulated a 205 megaton, 130 warheads all out attack on the UK killing 29 million and injuring 7 million with 19 million short term survivors. The following is the diary entry for day 13 after the attack from the Warwickshire regional command response (Square Leg was the main driver of the scenario depicted in Threads)
Feeding to commence at 1800 hrs. Calorific content of meals will be six hundred + one pint of water (non- workers), 800 + two pints of water (workers). Meals provided for infant feeding totally inadequate, request additional supplies. Known casualty figures 37,000; seriously injured 67,000. Radiation sickness entering the third stage. Disease control absolute priority. All Essential Service Routes cleared. Identify and prepare additional burial resources. Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation.
These were to be the first feedings of survivors, a full fortnight in.
800 calories for workers! A bowl of thin soup and a roll basically. Youd get maybe a week of work before malnutrition started to set in.
The 'good' news is we wont get hit by 130 warheads now if it goes hot.
Grim grim grim
Yeah. Go get 'em Liz.
Kosovo was the first conflict I was engaged for and I completely supported standing up to Serbia then.
I also thought and still think removing Saddam was the right thing to do. Even if that's not a popular opinion anymore.
Standing up to Putin is unquestionably correct.
It is always easy to know when Russia is in a really bad place when the shills have to resort to whataboutism from something decades ago as their response. Why don't you tell the thousands of Ukrainian children abducted by the criminal Russian regime to be raised as Russians that there's no real genocide going on?
The L7 gun (UK Royal Ordnance, take a bow) these conversions carry was devastating against the older generations of tanks.
And Truss and the ERG all voted for it...
The first of those didn't agree to such a border, and for her troubles was ignominiously chucked out by the ERG. The second did, and was praised to the skies by the ERG.
OK, it's a bit complicated! The MHRA authorises drugs. The MHRA has authorised puberty blockers... for certain uses. However, doctors can and routinely do use all sorts of drugs for purposes other than which they are licensed. (On the grounds that the drugs have been authorised for some use, ergo we know they're reasonably safe, and that their usage to date has also proven them safe.) The checks on whether doctors are making sensible prescribing/treatment decisions are either at the level of the individual practitioner or at the level of the service. The service is covered by the CQC. Individual practitioners are covered by licensing and, ultimately, the threat of being done for malpractice if they can't justify their decision(s), which would be judged against the Bolam standard.
NICE assesses cost effectiveness and recommends best treatments. NICE has a massive backlog and there are many aspects of medicine where there is no NICE guidance at present. NICE generally concentrates on the bigger stuff and the numbers here are pretty small. NICE could be asked to recommend best practice in this area. (Maybe they have been? I don't know.)
Celtic sectarianism.....witty harmless bants.
Which is precisely why Truss's NI Protocol Bill is viable. Because its domestic law for domestic territory, perfectly legitimate and legal. If territorial integrity had been sacrificed then Parliament couldn't pass Truss's NI Protocol Bill and if it did, it could be struck down by a higher court.
"Advise public on location and times Feeding Centres will be open, safe routes to them (and) emphasize subsistence level of feeding in operation."
Sounds like Covid marshal heaven!
This evidence review found limited evidence for the effectiveness and safety of gender- affirming hormones in children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, with all studies being uncontrolled, observational studies, and all outcomes of very low certainty. Any potential benefits of treatment must be weighed against the largely unknown long-term safety profile of these treatments.
https://cass.independent-review.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/20220726_Evidence-review_Gender-affirming-hormones_For-upload_Final.pdf
The problem with spending for spending's sake is it is inefficient and encourages wasteful spending on a "use it or lose it" basis. If you want to give 2% per annum then far better would be giving the MoD 2% per annum but letting them save eg 0.25% of GDP in peaceful years so that they have a war chest to access when they need it, rather than having to go begging for more money when they need it.
That is what sovereignty and taking back control is all about, evolving over time and Parliament doing its job.
Under New Labour, he suggested to a number of people in government that correlating planning permission, active building sites (domestic) and large personal cash withdrawals would be a good idea.
The reaction was interesting - someone at HMRC told him to stop causing trouble.
For a period, there were areas of London where it was impossible to do a legitimate, taxed job. The pirates would undercut you massively.
They killed several people, in site accidents, as a by-the-by.
And I mean lucky.
says Latvian FM.
https://twitter.com/visegrad24/status/1572529226435424256
The wider point is perhaps this: even the medical establishment is not immune from fads or for allowing ideologies to influence treatment. See the sterilisation of "simple-minded" women during the 20th century or the treatment of homosexuality, considered a mental disorder at one time. So it really matters to get care which is based on sound and properly tested evidence not as a result of wish fulfilment or ideology of self-interest. The evidence in the Keira Bell case is really interesting on this aspect, as is the Court's reaction, even if the decision - on the issue of Gillick competence - was the right one.
Nuclear winter was predicated on soot from urban infernos/firestorms. Modern building design lessens that risk considerably